* This picture represents the Count in an undress. The face is decidedly, though by no means remarkably, handsome; the nose is aquiline,--the upper lip short and chiselled,--the eyes gray, and the forehead, which is by far the finest feature in the countenance, is peculiarly high, broad, and massive. The mouth has but little beauty; it is severe, caustic, and rather displeasing, from the extreme compression of the lips. The great and prevalent expression of the face is energy. The eye, the brow, the turn of the head, the erect, penetrating aspect,--are all strikingly bold, animated, and even daring. And this expression makes a singular contrast to that in another likeness to the Count, which was taken at a much later period of life. The latter portrait represents him in a foreign uniform, decorated with orders. The peculiar sarcasm of the month is hidden beneath a very long and thick mustachio, of a much darker colour than the hair (for in both portraits, as in Jervas's picture of Lord Bolingbroke, the hair is left undisguised by the odious fashion of the day). Across one cheek there is a slight scar, as of a sabre cut. The whole character of this portrait is widely different from that in the earlier one. Not a trace of the fire, the animation, which were so striking in the physiognomy of the youth of twenty, is discoverable in the calm, sedate, stately, yet somewhat stern expression, which seems immovably spread over the paler hue and the more prominent features of the man of about four or five and thirty. Yet, upon the whole, the face in the latter portrait is handsomer; and, from its air of dignity and reflection, even more impressive than that in the one I have first described.--ED. CHAPTER IX. A DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER, AND A LONG LETTER; A CHAPTER, ON THE WHOLE, MORE IMPORTANT THAN IT SEEMS. THE scenes through which, of late, I have conducted my reader are by no means episodical: they illustrate far more than mere narration the career to which I was so honourably devoted. Dissipation,--women,--wine,--Tarleton for a friend, Lady Hasselton for a mistress. Let me now throw aside the mask.